What I Read in November 2016

November was a great month fiction and miserable month for just about everything else. First off, I'll mention I'm in process of getting together a "Best of 2016" list together in preparation for the "Short Sharp Shocks," panel I'll be on for next year's Arisia. I'm on the panel with some incredible writers and reviewers of short fiction but one awesome thing is that one of the panelists shares an appreciation for one of my current favorite short fiction writers, Gwendolyn Kiste (highlighted below). This promises to be a great conversation.

I'm also going to make a shameless plug because: why not? "Gazer," by Karen Osborne appears in the same "Electric Spec Magazine," issue as my story "The Yuru-chara of Hector, NY." Read her excellent story first and then give my a try in if you're in the mood for a coming-of-age story set in a world beset by virtual creatures come to life. Although not described here, the other stories in the issue (by authors Chris Barnham, Sydney Baylock, and Chris Walker) are also of very high quality and well worth your time.

"When You Work For the Old Ones" by Sandra McDonald in Nightmare Magazine. A deceptively straightforward title for a deceptively straightforward concept. This story isn't what it purports to be which I mean in the best possible way. The gestures to Mythos are meant not to describe a world where such terrors exist but rather the conflicted feelings any artist must feel seeing the claw and wing of Lovecraft's generation spanning influence. Still, for a very short work, it creates an impressive fatalistic atmosphere.
"The Curtain" by Thana Niveau, reprinted in "The Dark," magazine. This is more terrifying. I've been paying more attention to how stories begin recently, trying to figure out how a writer foreshadows the themes and preoccupations of a story. Some writers go the direct route, stating whatever the speculative or horrific element is right in the first paragraph. Here, Niveau sets up a scuba diver slipping below the waves off a coast devastated by a recent hurricane. There's nothing overtly supernatural or horrific other than isolation and risk suggested by strapping a steel tank to your back and plunging into the black. However, as those initial themes return later in the story they appear in nightmarish distortions. Overall, I recommend this as an effective character study and exercise in establishing and maintaining a very specific mood.
"Holiday Playlist for the End of the World" by Gwendolyn Kiste in Daily Science Fiction. Charming and yet disturbing flash piece about how Christmas Carols might presage the end of the world. Considering I've got to start some holiday this weekend, this piece continues to sit with me. This is might be a coincidence but the story shares a structure with an old "Built to Spill," song, "You Were Right."
Gazer by Karen Osborne in Electric spec. A powerful story equating fantasy life with addiction. I've seen this motif before but the focus on the concept of the "chosen one," sells it. Plus, and this may be me reading into things, Osborne's alluring fantasy world alludes to sources, Thomas Ligotti and Susanna Clarke, that I could see myself falling victim to. The closing line is chilling.

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation. Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...

Ancient Logic

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